A Schilling for your thoughts?

The press is running riot with stories about Schillings and its 'reputation management' skills after the injunction fiasco and the cunning plan to ‘sue Twitter'. The Guardian reports 'Injunction publicity backfires on celebrity law firm', while predictably, The Daily Mail put the boot in rather more brutally in 'The Injunction King, a cabal of grasping lawyers and a £2000 assault on free speech'.

I'll leave you the pleasure of reading this latter piece of journalism. Quite remarkable. The usual tin foil hat wearers appear to ridicule law firms, law, lawyers and anything else that they fancy commenting on from their bunkers. This was not a victory for free speech. Serious matters, hidden from public gaze by injunctions - Trafigura et al - deserve public scrutiny (and MPs raising the matter in Parliament if injuncted). Footballers and their dongles?

As the injunction has not been lifted, and I am a fan of the rule of law, I shall join other lawyers in not naming the footballer who everyone now knows through Twitter and the antics of Mr Hemming MP in Parliament the other day. I have added a ‘black mask' to the pic circulating widely on the net.

I don't know much about Schillings, or Mr Schilling. I admire the way he is reported as having worked his way up from a very modest background to run and head a successful law firm. Lawyers do what lawyers do. His reputation as ‘The Silencer' will not appeal to many - but it clearly did to those who sought privacy.

I am a pragmatist when it comes to the business of law. If there is a law, lawyers are going to use their skills to evade it or enforce it for the benefit of clients. Criminal lawyers are used to public opprobium when they defend rapists, killers, paedophiles and other undesirables. It goes with the territory - but everyone is entitled to be defended in criminal matters and, it must be the case and right, in civil matters as well. If we don't like a law - we have a longstanding tradition of law making in Parliament and we can lobby to change the law.

While Mr Schilling may well be reflecting on the PR disaster that is CTB - I doubt very much whether it will trouble him or his firm for long. Win some, lose some - but always get the fee? Nor should it. Not all law is cuddly and fluffy - and neither are the clients who instruct the law firms.

The Bar has the long tradition of the cab rank principle - where all, no matter how unsavoury, are entitled to good legal representation. Solicitors can be more choosy about their work and their clients. I have no problem at all with law firms representing those who want particular laws enforced. We have courts to decide on the interpretation and application of the law - and an appeals mechanism if the first instance decisions are plainly wrong (as they are, inevitably, from time to time). Perhaps, in some cases, clients claim their rights now at their own peril. Caveat Twitter?

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